Woah: Blizzard cancels their next-gen MMO, ‘Titan’
Woah then. Count this as something I wasn’t expecting. We’ve known for years that Blizzard was developing a new MMO. We knew that it was a bit of a troubled development. But I don’t think any of us knew it was headed towards cancellation.
Polygon:
Blizzard has officially canceled development on its mysterious next-generation massively multiplayer game Titan. The company confirmed the news to Polygon in a recent interview.
This revelation comes after at least seven years in development and word last year that the developer was going back to the drawing board to reevaluate the project.
Speaking to Polygon, Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime reiterated that the company has technically never officially announced Titan, though it hasn’t been shy to talk about the game over the past seven years. “We had created World of Warcraft, and we felt really confident that we knew how to make MMOs,” Morhaime said. “So we set out to make the most ambitious thing that you could possibly imagine. And it didn’t come together.
“We didn’t find the fun,” Morhaime continued. “We didn’t find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a reevaluation period, and actually, what we reevaluated is whether that’s the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no.”
Chris Metzen, Blizzard’s senior vice president of story and franchise development, called the decision to cancel Titan “excruciating.” Morhaime agreed: “It’s always really, really hard to make those kind of decisions. It was hard when we canceled Warcraft Adventures. It was hard when we canceled StarCraft Ghost. But it has always resulted in better-quality work.”
“The discipline of knowing when to quit is important,” Metzen said. “We were losing perspective and getting lost in the weeds a little. We had to allow ourselves to take that step back and reassess why the hell we were doing that thing in the first place.”
I find this pretty bumming. As my interest in WoW has wained over the years, I’ve always said, “Well, I can’t wait until their new MMO.” A new world, a new engine, a new experience. And now? I don’t know, yo.